Who+wants+to+be+a+gang+member?

=Who wants to be a gang member?= by Nicholas Ingrande

Purpose
To prevent students from wanting to join a gang.

Time Required
This activity will take a whole day, but total time will be about an hour.

Number of Participants
The whole school.

Supplies Needed
The supplies needed are information about gangs and gang related crimes.

Preparation
The facilitator will have to prepare six facts about gangs and gang related crimes, that will be presented the first five minutes of each class.

Introduction
The introduction will take place at the end of the day in a whole school assembly. The introduction will be a slide show that shows the negative effects on gangs. It will contain statistics of gang related crimes while showing pictures of gang members and innocent people who have died in gang related crimes. The presentation will also contain quotes from Stanley "Tookie" Williams.

Process
At the beginning of every class period, every teacher will read a fact about gang related crimes. During the day a select group of students will be chosen and given a time to walk out of class at a certain time. In order to keep these students busy, teachers will create some work for these students to work on, because these students will be taken to a room without contact from the rest of the students until the end of the day. At the end of the day for advisory class there will be a school assembly that will show the presentation described in the introduction. At the end of the presentation, the students that were taken from class will be inserted into the presentation with information of what happened to them. For example, Julie Smith, an innocent bystander was shot in a drive by shooting. She was not a gang member, but happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Debrief
What did you learn today about gangs? How did you feel about the presentation? How did you feel when you found out what happened to your friends that were missing from class? What are your feelings about gangs and their negative effects?

Credits
This activity was inspired from a Mothers Against Drunk Driving activity I saw when I was in high school. The activity took place a whole week and they left a car on the lawn that had been part of a drunk driving accident. On one of the days the grim reaper came to class and took a student. They took about 10-20 students to represent students who had been killed in a drunk driving accident.